Colour me mad

14

Mar

2014

By Miranda

How times change. We try to keep our words up to date, and the clues topical. The problem arises when a dictionary changes its (collective) mind. Thus DISCOLORATION.

In ancient times, well, when I first approached this word, the correct spelling in British English was, as above, DISCOLORATION. But why? Surely only the North American spelling convention drops the U from the word COLOUR and, thus, from all its variants.

Alas, no. DISCOLORATION was always a trap for young players. Apparently COLOUR came into English early, and was influenced to include a U by its progress through old French (c.f. colonisation of England by the Normans, 1066 and all that...) while DISCOLORATION was a later addition, being extracted directly from the Latin in which that U had no place at all.

Now, however, it appears that where the dictionary (several, actually) used to indicate DISCOLORATION as the default and DISCOLOURATION as the alternative, times have changed (Eheu fugaces - that's more Latin, though today, which somewhat undermines the sentiment of the quotation, at least it's easy to get an online translation).

Over the last few years (OK, or decades, possibly, I wasn't paying enough attention) the order of preference has moved to DISCOLOURATION as a first preference and DISCOLORATION as an alternative in British English and always in North American English.

I suppose it's consistent and one doesn't have to know the history of every word in our language in order to be able to spell it 'correctly' but, frankly, it's a nuisance when you're making a crossword and DISCOLORATION is in the grid, has been used for years, was correct at time of publication and still is, up to a point.

Can you think of any other such spelling variations?

1287 Responses to

Colour me mad

said:

March 28, 2014 at 10:26 AM

Not offhand sorry... but I do know milk is now $2 for 2 litres... I wish it was that price when MY kids were growing up... LOL

said:

March 28, 2014 at 10:30 AM

Anne, as the 2 trees are in the front yard I presently have all the branches piled up on the nature strip...I am not sure yet how to get rid of them but I will first cut them up into smaller pieces to facilitate handling...:)

dingbell asked (March 27, 2014 at 10:26 PM) how ifeargod did Quadra in less than 30 secs. That's doable, just refresh the screen til you see a a large colour rectangles that complete 2 or more corners. ifeargod's current completion time is currently 6 seconds! So maybe she kept refreshing the screen til a quadra came up that was virtually complete. Another way might be to capture an image of the screen, pause the screen, analyse the image for the the best rectangle to swipe, unpause Quadra and complete that rectangle. Repeat foregoing procedure til Quadra is complete. Well even that is going to take a lot of effort and likely to take longer than 6 seconds. The third way is that ifeargod knows quirk with Quadra that no one else knows about, and that would be the most likely because YP games contain quirks that only a few players know about. The computer programmers who write the script that run the games know all these quirks because they designed them to be quirks, perhaps for their own use or for some related users to use. As members you should request YP to make known to everyone, in a blog, every quirk that exists in any game.

said:

March 28, 2014 at 10:38 AM

Yep, milk is cheap now, my wife who used to always have a small glass of port before bedtime now has a big glass of Sustagen made with milk..:))

said:

March 28, 2014 at 10:43 AM

PD, did you finish the quadra that you had up to 35k points or lose the lot?

said:

March 28, 2014 at 10:45 AM

Pedro, do you have the free mulching service from the local council, l think you need to look on the council website and they will let you know what to do:))

said:

March 28, 2014 at 10:46 AM

Good morning Pd, how are you today?

said:

March 28, 2014 at 10:47 AM

Fir, are the maple trees cultivated in orchards now or are they just trees tapped in the forests? :)

said:

March 28, 2014 at 10:49 AM

Anne, thanks for the suggestion, I will certainly investigate that avenue....:)))

said:

March 28, 2014 at 10:51 AM

Both, pedro, but usually just stands of maples in the wild. :)

said:

March 28, 2014 at 11:13 AM

l must look at photos of Canada with maples growing in the wild, it sounds beautiful:))

said:

March 28, 2014 at 11:22 AM

Anne, I checked out your suggestion...no free mulching service...and even for green waste we must pay when we take it to the waste collection centre...our council does not provide much help or service at all...just another revenue collecting tax department....:((

said:

March 28, 2014 at 11:45 AM

Pedro, we have a free mulching service, we just have to prove we live in the area and take it to the appropriate location:))

said:

March 28, 2014 at 11:49 AM

I remember about 2 or 3 years ago I rang up council and reported a 15 metre high dead exotic tree on the front nature strip which is technically govt land but we are responsible for cutting the grass and keeping it tidy.
It had started to drop dead branches and was a hazard. OK they said "no problem". 1st visit...a bloke in collar and tie arrived and declared the tree dead.2nd visit...4 man work crew cut tree down, mulched it. 3rd visit...2 man stump grinding crew, left big holes in earth and large wood chips everywhere. 4th visit...man in collar and tie to inspect work. 5th visit...2 man crew with big excavator on truck...made more mess than they cleaned up. 6th visit...3 man crew with shovels, rakes and some grass seeds. My wife and I still had to tidy it up a bit. This "gigantic" tree which I estimate at the base may have had a diameter of 300mm must have cost the rate payers thousands of dollars to remove. :((

pd thanks for the Quadra info. Sounds like hard work to me so I'll just keep playing for high scores over time. I'm not fussed about scores but was interested in how it could be done. Some (possibly obsessive)people must practice the crosswords a few times I think, or print it, as well as leaving certain letters out until it's almost finished. If that's what they want to do fine, but I don't care if I never beat times obtained that way.

pedro studmuffin just piles up the offcuts and then chops them up filling the greenwaste bin every two weeks, it does take time but with the chipper he bought he can get an enormous amount in the bin each time.

said:

March 28, 2014 at 12:01 PM

Hi Dingbell, Scat and Pedro we have a new topic to chat about, go to the Players Lounge:)))